Strikerklm96

Maybe the screenshots can get taken if you have a Kerbal on Eva, and they are worth science (depending on where you are of course, as with any science item) as well as the gallery thing if you return them.

I like the idea of difficulty levels except, 1. Not being able to revert after rocket explodes is bad because sometimes my rockets explode and crash due to glitches, which doesn't have anything to do with anything I could have done, which is just stupid. 2. Changing physics depending on difficulty would be weird, and require them to have two sets of physics laws built in.

You can remove parts of a space ship while its out and about. Why would you do this? 1. If you get somewhere with less fuel than you thought, you can hopefully remove hefty parts to salvage the mission. 2. If part of the ship breaks off, you can unbolt the other half to balance it for flight reasons. And from a realism standpoint, if kerbals can repair parts, they can probably unbolt/unweld them. (I'm imagining a kerbal has to be next to the part, and you click on it to bring up a dialogue box that asks you are you sure you want to do this?, after which the part falls off, or explodes, or whatever) Also, the devs don't want to add a delta-V calculator (I know about kerbal engineer) for the reason that it removes from the experience of just playing the game to get a feel for it. I understand that, but I think this would be a nice complement to that choice.

I thought of this previously, but instead I thought of it as being called a computer simulation. So you weren't actually building the rocket, it was a computer simulation of it, in a computer.

Maybe we can have a plugin: If you chose Corporate, you have to play RollerCoaster Tycoon till you have enough funds to start up the space program, upon which they are transferred over, and then play from there. If you choose Government, you have to play SimCity till you have enough funds. I'm kidding. I actually do like the idea though, and this could play into the "Competition" idea, in that who you are competing against changes.

What about one type of pipe that has a light to indicate what state it is in (green, red, yellow), and can be right clicked on to have its various options toggled like direction and state.

A Newton is a kg*m/s^2, not kg*m/s. You cannot calculate delta-v from just a force, you also need the forces duration. In your calculation you accidentally assumed it applied it for 1 second. So I guess you have actually found out that the decoupler applies 250,000 newtons for 0.01 seconds. 250,000m/s^2 * 0.01s / 65kg = 38.46m/s. They ought to put the force duration on the decoupler though.

I don't think we should be trying to cater to those kinds of players. And requiring players to utilize/visit the majority of content doesn't seem too crazy I hope.

Yeah, I agree with pretty much all that, except that the Stayputnik should be introduced earlier. (I personally don't like unmanned things.) The game should be designed so you have to do something in a difficult fashion the first time you do it(like going to a planet without nuclear engines). That way doing something again will actually be interesting, because you can make it much better. I also think the tech tree should be more spread out(less parts per node) and directed. So unmanned modules are on a branch, engines are on another, structural pieces another, ect. It also often ends up that I get tons of parts that I will literally never actually need to accomplish a mission. And as for "grindy science", it doesn't help that rovers don't work because they flip over 99% of the time and or take forever to get anywhere, so you end up having to send seperate missions, rather than something that can visit all of them, and actually get some use out of the Science Lab(that thing is useless).bIt would be nice if there was a way to have the rover automated, so you could leave, do a little time warp, and he would be at the destination. You should definitely have to visit 85% or more of the solar system to get the whole tech tree unlocked.

Nogl: REALLY Large, like the size of properly scaled Kerbin, ~2.5g's, somewhere between Jool and Dres. Average Atmos Exo: Really small planet ~0.2g's of gravity, twice the distance of Eeloo's orbit. No Atmos Gokon: Kerbin sized, ~1.1g's, in clockwise(reverse) orbit around sun. Average Atmos + Oxygen for Space-Planes. Also, LOL Toroidial planets, I would be up for that, (it might not be possible with the engine though)

They are also random events of profit and science.

I like it, but I don't want earning money to be a grind. There should be more and different possibilities. Also, I don't think you meant "costs" under "3. Commercial Space Tourism", doesn't it earn you money?

You can not exceed the speed of light in a vacuum, any FTL, regardless of how it does it, would result in warping space time so it appears as though you have traveled a shorter path. Wormhole and FTL are the same. Also, FTL does not have to be overpowered.

I dont understand why everyone thinks FTL has to be overpowered. Imagine an FTL drive the size of an Jumbo64 Fuel tank that weighs 50 and requires tons of electric charge and or fuel to activate once. It can only be activated in interstellar space, in other words, you have to get this monster and its requirements into an escape trajectory of the sun. Then and only then can you activate it, where it will put you on the edge of interstellar space of another solar system. Even after all that you have to now maneuver into alignment with those planets. And for those looking for reasoning as to why it can't be activated near the sun: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heliosphere

Any thoughts?/Bump

I don't see why FTL has to be "broken". You could just make it so it can only be activated in interstellar space, so you still have to get X meters above the sun, and it is HUGE, and EXTREMELY HEAVY, so doing so would be really difficult. Once you activate it, it will take you to just outside another solar system of choice(or not), which you will, again, have to use standard parts and fuel to maneuver in. It's pretty easy to make things not broken. Also, proposed FTL devices are JUST AS LIKELY as proposed wormhole transit. They are both relying on relatively unknown things. The FTL drive being negative energy(which is real but unknown whether it can be isolated from its positive energy counterpart), and the other being the ability to hold open a wormhole long enough to do anything(and not requiring impossibly large amounts of energy). Finally, I guess I'm a little unclear about what realism trade offs the devs are willing to make for better gameplay. We have planets 1/10 the size(there is a mod I know), Kerbals who dont need to be fed(I installed the mod to fix that), and the RAPIER Engine(is that real?). I just hope that if they chose not to have other Solar system travel, someone will make a mod for it.

One thing that I would like a Kerbal to be able to do is detach(permanently) or otherwise destroy parts on a vessel. Your probably thinking WTF? But surely you have run into a problem where you could have detached things to help solve the problem. Occasionally I will run a little short on fuel, and small parts make a big difference. If my Kerbal could have just unbolted a few things like excess parachutes, the Goo Canisters, and Lander Legs, he would have had enough Delta-V to get him and his ship into orbit, instead I had to ditch the craft (including all the science it had), and use his RCS to get picked up by another ship. If he can carry enough materials to repair things, he can carry a wrench to unbolt them.

I agree with almost everything you had to say, and I hope these changes, or something similar are implemented. However, I always saw the 48-7S as a Lander Engine, not a Lifter Engine. Look at the ISP and shape of it, i'm 99% sure it was supposed to be the small Lander, with the 909 being the medium, and the poodle the large. Also, for any situation where an object (no matter what it is) has a larger cousin, the larger cousin should always be every so slightly better, so that people are encouraged to build somewhat realistically. For instance, the fuel canisters get more and more sturdy as they get bigger(I always thought they should have a little more fuel). My point is, the Mainsail should be very slightly better than the LV-T30, probably its TMR. And for those who say "The incentive is that its less parts so it puts less strain on the computer.", thats an incredibly stupid game incentive. Do FPS games encourage one weapon over the other because one has laggy textures? Do board games encourage one action over the other because action 1 will take 5 minutes while action 2 will take 5 hours and waste your time? Game balance shouldn't have anything to do with anything outside the game world, like your CPU. Also, one thing i've never been sure of is whether the BACC SFB is better than 2 or 3 staged RT-10 SFB's, maybe they are already balanced.

I, along with many others would love to see procedural fuel tanks, girders, ladders, ect. have you seen this thread? : http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/51390-Procedural-Parts-%28The-best-way-to-improve-the-game-experience-%29

The following is an idea mainly related to Career Mode. It relates THREE popular subjects (losing, observatories, contracts), so I thought it deserved its own thread. Threatening Meteor(s): Imagine there is a meteor on a collision course with Kerbin, and it will do serious damage if it hits, but you don't have the technology to stop it! This could be a potential motive for the Career Mode, or at least another motive along with others. The Idea: Meteors threaten Kerbin. To find their locations and get a warning before they hit and cause (***EVENTS***), you have to advance your observatory tech. This observatory tech includes satellites in orbit, and upgrading your Command Center. To stop the meteors, you have 4 meteor related items which are outlined below. To solve a meteor problem you have the following solutions. Each one is progressively higher on the tech tree. I: Battering Ram: Ancient technology attached to a rocket makes it pretty effective! II: LV-N Firecracker: A LV-N engine with its fuel consumption rate switched to "Really Fast". III: Kerbal Kompressor: Presses a bunch of Kerbals into a block, ready to be shipped at a low flat rate. IIII: BEAM: Apparently it shoots at rocks. A note on the side says "Launch into orbit asap!". ***EVENTS***: Contracts are related because people will pay you to stop a meteor from hitting them. Money Loss because it hits your suppliers of items, causing price increase, or hits your Command Center. There don't need to be locations on Kerbin, a meteor will just be about to hit and it will just hurt some random supplier or institution that doesn't physically exist.(unless you stop it) There are 3 kinds of meteor. Small: Minor Consequences (Minor Money Loss and Contracts), can be deflected with Battering Ram, or destroyed with LV-N Firecracker. A little harder to spot than the rest, least warning. Medium: Pretty Serious Consequences (Lots of Money Loss and Contracts), can be destroyed with LV-N Firecracker. Easy to spot, reasonable time to react. Large: Cause Most Serious Consequences (Life Ending, aka you lose). Cannot be stopped except with BEAM, you must evacuate Kerbin using the Kerbal Kompressor. Impossibly easy to spot, lots of time to react. BEAM stops all Meteors and is a permanent solution, so long as its in orbit. But its hardest to get. As for what happens after you evacuate Kerbin, any of the following work: Win, Land back at Kerbin and resume like normal(it was life ending, not planet destroying), Land on a new planet and automatically get your base recreated there, and hope to get BEAM before the next one hits. Why I think this idea is good: Difficulty of Career can easily be adjusted by increasing or decreasing the frequency of meteors, as well as time before the first Large Meteor Impact, and successive impacts. Is a pretty good motive for why these green Kerbals are trying to go into space. Makes good use of Contracts, Losing, Money, and Observatories, if you like those things. As a final note, lots of these ideas can be switched around and or taken out: Maybe there should only be one meteor that you are trying to stop from the beginning, its only life ending, and once you solve it, your free. Maybe there should not be a final solution, and its a constant threat. Maybe there should never be a Life Ending meteor, only minor damaging ones that hurt money and contracts.